In early February we visited our niece, who’s finally realized her dream of moving to Florida after a lifetime of too many winter thrills dealing with lake effect snow in upstate New York. It was a move whose time had come, ironically facilitated by covid, which enabled her to work at her Rochester job remotely a long long way from the office. Who’s to say there are no silver linings? After three years in the sunshine state she could claim to be a very happy camper.
It was only a few weeks after that trip that a common grackle showed up at our feeder on Iffley Road, an FOY. FOY is birding lingo for “first of the year,” an intensely personal designation that only applies to the observer in question; your FOY grackle, if and when it occurs, will be a different bird than mine. It’s that time of year in Boston when all manner of FOYs start showing up, one after another, until things get completely and thrillingly out of hand come April and May. One could also apply FOY principles to other observations, the first crocus or pothole or runner wearing only shorts and a t-shirt, but at present nobody ever does.
And in early March the mayor of Boston traveled to Washington D.C. to be grilled by the intrepid House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, eager to give her a piece of their mind about how she’s got some nerve to declare Boston a sanctuary city. She was to be joined by the mayors of Denver, Chicago, and New York City. It was expected to be a highly emotionally charged event, ultimately affecting the lives of thousands in the most consequential way.
The unifying theme here is migration, in case you were wondering, where it’s all about movement of one kind or another. At the most fundamental level, we live in a universe whose very essence is motion, right down to its molecules; don’t forget that it all started with what is called the Big Bang. The phenomenon of motion will continue in some way or other forever, or at least until everything somehow chills down to 0º Kelvin, but not to worry! Those in the know assure us this will never happen, or at least not tomorrow or even the next day or probably even this year, or even in your lifetime, so be comforted.
As fantastic as it may seem, even the major landmasses of our fair planet have been in motion for over 200 million years, spreading apart from what was once a giant single mother of a continent. This was a theory that few believed when it was proposed a little over a hundred years ago, but the modern discovery of plate tectonics explains how the very ground on which we stand possesses a certain migratory quality. Fasten your seatbelts, especially if you live along a fault line!
Then there’s A23a, at 1400 square miles the world’s biggest iceberg, adrift since 1986. After decades of relative inertia, it began moving northwards around 2020, and might’ve kept going all the way to Miami if it hadn’t got caught up in the current of what is known as a Taylor column, near the South Orkney Islands. There the poor thing started spinning about in place (counterclockwise, due to the Coriolis effect), which went on for a few months until it finally got stuck on the continental shelf of South America, its wanderings over at least for now.
Compared to such grand meanderings, one might expect the humble movements of species around and about terra to be something more mundane, in which case one would be very, very wrong, or at least very jaded. The migration of birds around and about the planet is a phenomenon both grand and spectacular, something that at times borders on the miraculous. Behold: you’ve got all these tiny hummingbirds and terns and wood warblers trekking thousands of miles every year, in some cases vast distances over water without a break, burning up unbelievable amounts of calories and body fat just to pull it off. Some don’t, in fact, pull it off at all, joining the casualty list that reflects the peril inherent in such bold and audacious activity. On the other hand, less ambitious migrants like that FOY grackle might’ve moseyed up to our back yard after spending the winter in Rhode Island, hardly a challenge. It takes all kinds.
What’s truly impressive in the end is the sheer number of participants taking part, millions and millions in motion all at once in the spring and fall, many flying through the night in thick feathery formations that can register on airline flight controllers’ radar scopes. When they all come down to feed and rest the next morning, it is to the great delight of those humans paying attention, some of whom devote much time and money to be in the right place at the right time. Even those not especially interested in these matters can’t help but notice FOYs if they’re paying any attention at all, like those robins showing up in the back yard or that enormous turkey vulture fluttering over the interstate, at the mercy of the winds.
Then there’s the so-called Great Migration, the annual movement of a million and a half wildebeests 1200 miles across the plains of East Africa, the subject of countless wildlife documentaries. Those yearning for a more up close & personal experience of that particular spectacle are destined to be customers for the very successful and lucrative safari industry, but be forewarned: such wildlife thrills don’t come cheap, and pray for good weather when you get to Entebbe or Nairobi or wherever.
Besides the starring ungulates, the Great Migration includes a large supporting cast of zebras and gazelles, all of whom attract the usual list of suspects among the African predators. the lions and hyenas and crocodiles, to name a few. It’s a helluva show and a great photo opportunity, though of course it’s also nature at its most raw and elemental; one might consider refraining from showing one’s gorier snaps to the kiddies. It may also come to a crashing and tragic halt one of these days, as global warming leads to ever more severe drought in Tanzania’s Serengeti and Kenya’s Maasai Mara. So go now, and get your pictures while you still can!
There’s clear rhyme and reason to what those wildebeests and their entourage are up to: it’s all about following the rains and the edible grass that results. We’re talking food. This is more or less true for avian travelers, as well, though with many of them there’s the added bonus of fortuitous breeding grounds at their destination. Those that fly to the Arctic are rewarded with limited numbers of predators and mind boggling quantities of insects in the spring, among other things. Birds that exist on seeds, like that FOY grackle, tend to not migrate nearly as far, and omnivores that also savor the excesses of human consumption, discarded pizza slices and french fries, don’t migrate at all. The house sparrows and starlings on Iffley Road provide a cheery if noisy presence throughout the bleak winter months, God bless ‘em, though there are many who consider them a curse.
Those two species in particular happen to be “introduced,” migrants of the most peculiar kind, if they’re even that. Neither is native to North America and might’ve never made it here from Europe without the benefit of a boat ride across the Atlantic, courtesy of well meaning homo sapiens. The sparrow’s intended purpose was to eradicate Linden moths, whose caterpillars were damaging the basswood trees in Brooklyn. The starlings were part of a program to bless America with the presence of all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare. Both species were destined to eventually dominate the entire continent with their breeding success, to the detriment of many native birds with whom they competed for food and breeding grounds. Both are excellent examples of how the road to hell is paved with good intentions, as any serious birder will tell you, especially one not charmed by their chatter on winter mornings that would otherwise be dead silent.
Of course the bane of balanced ecosystems is the long history of willy nilly distribution of non-native species by humankind to all parts of the world. This has been going on since the very onset of homo sapiens, back when the first bit of muck with seed material got stuck on the sole of somebody’s foot or footwear and was distributed to various parts of Africa. This practice ultimately affected the rest of the planet, following our species’ triumphant (or catastrophic, depending on how you look at it) grand march from that continent out to every part of the world, starting about a hundred thousand years ago.
So those sparrows and starlings, along with kudzu and knotweed and the rabbits in Australia, and rats everywhere and so many other misplaced species too numerous to mention are all but the tip of the iceberg when one ponders humanity’s three hundred thousand year presence. God knows how much redistribution has occurred over those many centuries, and maybe “misplaced” is the wrong word; it’s simply what has happened, and the current state of the world’s ecosystems is the splendid result.
Right now it is mid-March and the Massachusetts countryside resounds with the piercing staccato calls of male cardinals staking out their breeding territories. Cardinals were once a strictly southern species but their numbers have steadily increased in the north, aided and abetted by the warming planet as well as the popularity of intentional human feeding efforts. If there’s actual physical conflict between any of the flashy red fellows it is not readily apparent, and it seems they all work it out in some way, as they have year after year. And so it goes for many birds that have shifted from “migrant” to “PR” (permanent resident) status hereabouts.
We’re talking turkeys and Carolina wrens and red-bellied woodpeckers, for one thing, smoothly and seamlessly taking their place in the local landscape over the past decade with no one taking much notice except the birders. Or such was the case until the turkeys started blocking traffic and pecking at their reflections in parked cars, one of which made it onto the TV news. Was it all about vanity, or something else?
Like the Massachusetts birds, migrants arriving in the Arctic for the spring work out turf issues amongst themselves in a similar ad hoc fashion, and maybe such is nature’s way (aka God’s plan) on the grandest level. Similarly, the seabirds that settle on rocky islands to form ridiculously dense breeding colonies around the world are testimony to co-operation on a whole other level. Their ultimate success depends upon plentiful food supplies in nearby waters, not always a sure thing. Such communities can decline and fail spectacularly as a result, and the warming of the world’s oceans is not a good trend in these matters.
And so it goes, as over millennia the creatures of the natural world have evolved workable solutions to their numbers comings and goings; it’s all about long-term survival. In sharp contrast, H.sapiens efforts in this regard remain a work in progress. In the modern era of the nation state, human movements between national borders have long been contentious and anything but simple, a reflection of huge disparities in national wealth and social and political stability. When it comes to migration, being “free as a bird” – or emphatically not – has never been fraught with greater meaning.
Though the stories differ in the details, people basically abandon one place for another because they’re seeking something better. Those first humans who left Africa had this in mind, and a hundred thousand years later many are still attempting the same journey, this time under vastly different circumstances. Back then, those heading out faced a planetary wilderness, devoid of humans and fraught with unknown dangers. This time the world is swarming with their own kind, and the dangers they face are largely a result of the barriers erected by nation-states to keep them out. Many undertake a perilous sea journey that often as not results in disaster, or at best detention if they even make it. In the meantime, countless storks and ibises, ducks and herons and songbirds and raptors pass overhead in their annual movements between Africa and Europe where weather is the major obstacle, except on the days when it isn’t. It’s on those days that fliers make their move, free as a bird.
Our niece’s move to Florida was kind of like that. Movement within the boundaries of a nation state tends to be unimpeded for those with enough initiative, to the surprise of no one, though in high-surveillance countries like China one hears things are quite different. But this is America, and her story was straightforward and absolutely typical of how these things go: she’d visited a friend from Rochester who’d made the move a few years before, and a direct encounter with Florida warmth and sunshine, coupled with the encouragement of someone who’d actually made the move, inspired confidence that she could pull it off. It helped that this plan had been in her mind for years already, something more like a dream, until it wasn’t.
It’s a common American story, this movement of people to all parts of our big country for any number of reasons, hoping for something better. “Better” might be anything: a job offering more money and opportunity, a milder climate offering more year round comfort, a new living situation far from the people or circumstances that have made life too difficult or unsatisfying or too fraught with memories one would like to leave behind. For some “better” simply means the promise of something other than what is, and starting in a different place is as good a way as any to make that happen. This strategy may not guarantee success, but its popularity is undeniable.
Our niece’s migration success story stands in sharp contrast to that of those arriving from beyond national boundaries. Florida, along with Texas, has been particularly aggressive in making migrants from outside the country unwelcome, in keeping with the current national mood of feeling besieged. This is an all too familiar story that has seen endless permutations since the country’s founding, and any pride that we are “a nation of immigrants” has steadily eroded in the minds of many to the point where Fortress America standing alone against the onslaught of the world lies at the heart of a new vision of what we are.
As a leader in this effort, the Governor of Florida has made shutting down immigration from overseas a key part of his brand, though of course our niece was more than welcome, even if she might not vote for him in the next election. He’s evidently still okay with how democracy works, at least for now, but one wonders how long that will last.
Governor of the state know about this?
The Mayor of Boston feels the same way, showing up for her meeting with the government committee despite that committee’s overt antagonism towards her and her willingness to resist the same agenda the Florida Governor is pushing so fervently. How this will all evolve is anybody’s guess, and there’s no shortage of prognosticators. Odds are you’re one of them, as it’s hard not to want to make predictions, at this point. Just remember to heed the wisdom of the bumper sticker telling you to not believe everything you think.
In the meantime, it was gratifying to see how well our niece has settled in, down there in her warm corner of the country. It was cool in the evening and warm in the afternoon and hey, it was February! Meanwhile, the lake effect had been generating not inches but feet of snow up there in upstate NY for months already, validating the wisdom of moving south, at least until the hellish heat of the Florida summer, and for our niece perhaps not even then: she’d had the wisdom (and the finances) to install a swimming pool. Her neighborhood reminded me of the California cul-de-sacs of my youth, tidy and humble ranch houses lining quiet streets, everybody’s lawn a bit scraggly and dried out, though she told us the rainy season had yet to arrive. There were palm trees and lizards and parking lots full of ibises instead of pigeons because this was Florida, after all.
We went to the Dali museum down in St Petersburg, a worthy destination now that surrealism has come to dominate the zeitgeist. Salvador was fascinated with all the movements towards modernism that led to upheaval in the history of fine art in the 20th century, cubism and expressionism and all that, but went on to do his own thing, making visual the stuff of dreams and the unconscious and later incorporating what he’d learned about the science of seeing. He was also a bit of a showman, sporting his bizarre mustache and appearing once on late night TV with an anteater on a leash, among other things. There’s another Dali museum in Spain, but this one – set on the clean and prosperous St Pete waterfront in a state known for being a bit offbeat, if not wacky: Florida man tosses live alligator through fast-food drive-in window – could not be better placed.
We visited a wildlife sanctuary and saw the emblematic manatees, which we were told have their own migration patterns up and down the Gulf coast, following the warm water currents. There were captive deer and flamingos and a few Florida panthers, among other species, none of them fit to return to the wild. There were also some opportunist free birds hanging around at feeding time. These included pelicans and a few black-crowned night herons, weirdly tame as can happen in Florida. That same heron species will show up in Massachusetts in a few months, nesting under bridges, and some of them might be the very birds we’d encountered at the sanctuary. It’ll be hard to tell for sure, as birds of the same species tend to look alike, except for the few that have been banded for research purposes. Banded birds are the only ones that carry any ID, and even those are thankfully not required to show it to government agents at any border one might name. It appears that policies will remain lax in this regard for the time being, let’s hope forever, even for the birds flying in from overseas. There are limits to the power of h.sapiens politics, and we should all be thankful for that.
